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FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES 


OF   THE 


EARLY  NEW  ENGLAND  CIVIL  POLITY 

1.  The  Old  Colony  Referendum. 

IL  The  Principle  of  Majority  Government. 

in.  Sound  License  Legislation. 

iV.  The  Ideal  of  Citizenship. 

DISCOURSE  BY 

LEONARD  WOOLSEY  BACON, 

ASSONET,  MASS., 

Pronounced  before  several  Historical  Societies  of  Massachusetts  and 

Connecticut. 

J*    ^     jIt     ^    Jt 

Reprinted!     Irom     the    Transactions   of    the   New    London   County    Historical    Society. 


NEW  LONDON,  CONN.  : 

Printed  by  Bingham  Paper  t>ox  Company, 

1906. 


FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES 


OF  THE 


EARLY  NEW  ENGLAND  CIVIL  POLITY  : 

L  The  Old  Colony  Referendum, 

n.  The  Principle  of  Majority  Government. 

IIL  Sound  License  Legislation. 

IV.  The  Ideal  of  Citizenship. 

DISCOURSE  BY 

LEONARD  WOOLSEY  BACON, 

ASSONET,  MASS.__ 

Pronounced  before  several  Historical  Societies  of  Massachusetts  and 

Connecticut. 

t^       c^       <1^       e^       ^* 
Reprinted    from    the    Transactions   of    the   New   London   County   Historical    Society. 


NEvX'  LONt)ON,  CONN.  T  ^ 
Printed  by  Bingham  Paper  Box  Company, 
1906. 


in 


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FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES 

OF   THE 

EARLY  NEW  ENGLAND  CIVIL  POLITY. 

BY 

LEONARD   WOOLSEY  BACON, 

ASSONET,  MASS. 

Read  before  the  New  London  County  Historical  Society  at  its  Mid- 
Winter  Meeting,  in  Norwich,  January  22,  1906. 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen: 

I  invite  you  to  follow  me  in  some  studies  in  the  early  political 
history  of  New  England  which  have,  as  I  conceive,  more  than  an 
antiquarian  interest  for  us  in  this  later  generation  and  vastly  expanded 
country.  I  am  safe  in  assuming  that  the  spirit  of  this  Historical 
Society  will  not  be  wholly  out  of  sympathy  with  my  contention  that 
the  prodigious  changes  which  these  nearly  three  centuries  have 
brought  to  pass  in  our  political  methods  and  political  principles  have 
not  been  in  all  cases,  in  the  direction  of  progress  and  improvement. 
I  make  bold,  in  the  present  paper,  to  point  out  four  characteristics  of 
the  polity  of  the  Founders  of  New  England  from  which  we  have  de- 
parted, to  the  serious  detriment  of  the  republic. 

I.  The  first  of  these  is  what  may  properly  be  called  The  Old  ■ 
Colony  Referendum.  There  is  a  certain  amount  of  mild  agitation 
going  on  in  our  day,  on  the  part  of  some  doctrinaire  publicists,  in 
favor  of  embodying  "  the  referendum  "  in  our  state  constitutions ;  by 
which  is  meant  the  adoption  of  a  somewhat  clumsy  contrivance  of 
certain  Swiss  political  experimenters,  by  which  on  the  demand  of  a 
prescribed  number  of  voters,  any  bill  passed  by  the  Congress  of  that 
republic  is  submitted  to  popular  assent  or  veto.  It  happened  to  me  to  be 
a  resident  of  Switzerland  at  the  time  when  this  constitutional  provision 
went  into  effect ;  and  from  what  I  then  observed,  and  from  what  I  have 
since  learned,  I  do  not  find  it  to  be  a  particularly  valuable  working  provi- 
sion— not  that  it  does  not  work  well,  but  that  it  does  not  do  very  much 


3126^4 


4       FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY. 

work  of  any  quality.  A  far  simpler  and  more  effective  provisicn, 
worthy,  for  the  wisdom  of  it,  to  have  survived  to  our  day  and  to  have 
been  imitated  in  all  the  constitution-making  States,  was  that  require- 
ment in  the  fundamental  law  of  little  Plymouth,  that  no  bill  should 
become  a  law  (emergencies  excepted)  unless  it  had  lain  over  from  one 
legislature  to  the  next.  The  lapse  of  this  most  salutary  provision  is 
not  the  least  of  the  losses  that  civilization  suffered  in  the  merger  of 
the  little  Old  Colony  with  its  overshadowing  neighbor  of  the  Bay.  As 
compared  with  the  cumbrous  piece  of  mechanism  of  the  Swiss  pub- 
licists, by  which  some  bills  might,  if  citizens  enough  should  take  the 
trouble  to  combine,  be  subjected  to  a  popular  vote,  it  was  a  simple, 
automatic  general  referendum,  by  which  «// bills  were  brought  under 
the  purview  of  the  body  of  citizens.  No  wiser  safeguard  has  since 
been  devised  against  the  malfeasance  of  representative  bodies.  If 
it  could  be  restored  to  our  State  constitutions  in  some  such  form  as 
thiS;  that  unless  passed  by  a  two-thirds  vote  (this  exception  would  pro- 
vide for  all  real  cases  of  urgency)  no  bill  should  become  a  law  unless 
read  a  second  time  in  one  legislature  and  adopted  by  the  next  legisla- 
ture, thiak  what  we  should  gain  by  it.  To  begin  with,  it  would  tend 
to  reduce  the  enormous  annual  output  of  new  legislation  •  which  is 
recognized  in  all  our  states  as  one  of  the  nuisances  incident  to  popu- 
lar government.  It  would  certainly  mitigate  in  some  measure  the  ex- 
temporaneous crudity  of  it,  which  often  requires  each  new  legislature 
to  spend  part  of  its  time  in  repealing  the  work  of  its  predecessor.  It 
would  hold  the  legislature  in  salutary  fear,  not  only  of  the  governor  and 
his  veto,  but  of  the  people.  Distinctly  bad  legislation — the  job  bills, 
the  grab  bills,  the  sneak  bills,  the  snap  bills — if  not  impossible,  would 
become  immensely  more  difficult ;  and  that  public  enemy,  the  organ- 
ized lobby,  would  find  its  power  suddenly  curtailed.  What  an  annual 
anxiety  it  would  lift  from  a  considerable  part  of  the  people!  Great 
corporations  and  great  public  interests — the  railroad  companies,  the 
insurance  companies,  the  trusts,  the  temperance  interest,  the  liquor 
interest,  the  Sunday  interest,  the  anti- Sunday  interest,  and  whatever 
else  there  is  that  has  hopes  or  fears  from  legislation — would  no  longer 
be  under  the  expensive  necessity  of  maintaining  their  pickets  at  the 


FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY.       5 

State-house  to  give  warning  against  surprises  and  ward  them  off  by- 
public  pressure  or  private  persuasion.  The  occupation  of  the 
heeler  and  striker,  if  not  aboHshed,  would  become  a  much  less  paying 
business  than  it  is  now  generally  understood  to  be.  But  while  cor- 
ruptionists  would  be  discouraged  and  disgusted,  honest  citizens  would 
come  to  their  rights.  This  remanding  to  the  people,  so  damaging  to 
bad  or  doubtful  projects,  would  be  simply  invigorating  to  such  as 
should  have  merit  enough  to  bear  the  sunlight  and  the  breeze  of 
protracted  public  discussion. 

The  restoration  of  the  Old  Colony  Referendum  would  have  even 
a  more  beneficent  result  in  the  regeneration  of  State  politics.  As 
things  now  are,  our  State  elections  deal  mainly  with  the  popularity 
or  the  paltry  personal  ambitions  of  Jones  or  Brown  or  Smith,  or, 
worse  than  that,  with  matters  of  national  party  politics  with  which 
State  officers  have  no  more  to  do  than  with  Mr.  Joe  Chamberlain's 
colonial  schemes.  In  most  States  a  state  election  is  not  much  more 
than  a  game  to  bet  on,  like  a  horse-trot  or  a  college  foot-ball  match. 
Under  the  Old  Colony  Referendum,  the  pending  questions  of  State 
and  local  policy  laid  over  from  the  last  legislature  would  be  distinct, 
definite  issues  before  the  people,  inviting  the  study  of  intelligent  citi- 
zens, and  provoking  debate  in  every  town  meeting  and  every  voting 
precinct.  Every  State  electoral  campaign  would  be  a  "  campaign  of 
education."  I  do  not  mean  thatthe  measures  would  be  voted  on  directly 
by  the  people ; — that  is  the  awkward  Swiss  way.  Neither  would  they 
be  the  subject  of  formal  instruction  to  the  representative  from  his  con- 
stituents, which  was  the  French  Jacobin  way.  But  these  measures 
would  be  the  points*  on  which  candidates  would  be  questioned,  and 
on  which  elections  would  turn.  Can  any  reform  be  suggested  which 
would  have  a  more  healthful  tendency  to  accomplish  that  great  poli- 
tical desideratum,  the  breaking  up  of  the  vicious  connection  between 
town  and  State  affairs  on  the  one  hand,  and  national  parties  on  the 
other  hand,  under  which  citizens  are  every  year  clamorously  solicited 
to  subordinate  their  political  home  duties  to  some  supposed  necessity 
of. supporting  the  national  administration  or  of  condemning  it? 

This,  remember,  was  a  characteristic  feature  of  the  fundamental 


6       FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY. 

law  of  "  the  Old  Colony  "  of  little  Plymouth.  I  am  no  blind  bigot  in 
my  admiration  of  the  Pilgrims.  I  am  not  prepared  to  admit  that  the 
Separatism  of  Plymouth  was  a  higher  and  truer  churchmanship 
than  the  Nationalism  of  Salem  and  Boston.  But  I  am  struck  with 
wonder  at  the  high  wisdom  of  the  Pilgrims  in  their  founding  of  the 
civil  state.  There  were  many  bold  and  original  strokes  of  political 
reform  delivered  in  those  early  New  England  days.  There  was  the 
splendid  coup  d'etat  of  the  Bay  colonists  in  bringing  their  charter 
across  the  seas  and  so  creating  an  autonomous  state.  There  was  the 
great  law  reform  of  the  New  Haven  men,  by  which  they  dropped  over- 
board, as  they  sailed,  the  precedents  of  English  law — common  law, 
statute  law  and  canon  law — and  gave  their  republic  a  fresh  start 
from  the  Pentateuch,  resolving,  as  the  historian  Knickerbocker  puts 
it,  to  be  governed  by  the  laws  of  God  until  they  had  time  to  make 
better  for  themselves.  There  was  the  glory  of  the  Connecticut  colo- 
nists, framing,  with  prophetic  wisdom,  the  first  written  constitution  of 
government  in  human  history.  And  high  over  these  is  the  excelling 
glory  of  the  Pilgrims,  that  they  did  nothing  of  the  kind,  but  just 
let  their  feeble  republic  alone  to  grow  into  shape  of  itself,  taking 
such  body  as  it  should  please  God  to  give.  Their  grand  deeds  were 
well  matched  by  the  grandeur  of  their  not  doing.  Here  we  find  one  of 
those  contrasts  that  the  muse  of  history  delights  in.  On  the  one 
hand  are  these  thoughtful  men  in  the  poverty  of  Plymouth,  living  all 
in  the  future,  with  every  temptation  to  great  schemes  and  visionary 
projects,  patiently  waiting  year  by  year  for  the  slow  strokes  of  Divine 
Providence  to  fashion  their  little  State  into  the  mould  of  a  world-wide 
empire;  and  on  the  other  hand,  fifty  years  later,  beyond  the  sea,  the 
greatest  philosopher  and  the  smartest  politician  in  all  England,  John 
Locke  and  Lord  Shaftesbury,  sitting  in  the  golden  sunshine  of  a 
monarch's  favor,  are  putting  their  sagacious  heads  together  to  produce 
a  constitution  for  the  Carolinas  that  has  been  the  laughing  stock  of 
history  from  that  day  to  this. 

II.  By  far  the  most  important  and  most  original  contribution  of 
early  New  England  to  the  science  of  polity  was  the  principle  of  Ma- 
jority Government.     We  have  lost  it  now  and  taken  instead  the  princi- 


FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY.       7 

pie  of  Government  by  Plurality,  that  is,  ordinarily.  Government  by 
Minorities.  We  have  traded  off  our  hereditary  birthright,  and  gotten 
in  exchange  for  it  a  mess  of  pottage,  and  an  ill-smelling  and  unsavory 
mess  at  that.  How  much  we  have  lost,  what  intolerable  mischiefs  we 
have  invited  upon  ourselves,  by  thus  abandoning  the  wise  usage  of 
our  fathers,  we  have  had  only  a  limited  means  of  proving  in  our  own 
experience ;  for  it  is  only  within  the  memory  of  this  generation  that 
this  invaluable  muniment  of  freedom  has  been  thrown  away  in  Massa- 
chusetts, and  still  more  lately  in  Connecticut.  But  we  have  only  to  look 
beyond  the  western  boundary  line,  to  where  the  plurality  system,  in  the 
State  and  City  of  New  York,  has  for  generations  had  its  perfect  work, 
to  see  what  abuses  it  is  capable  of  producing.  In  New  York  City,  in 
almost  every  vigorously  contested  election  for  many  years,  until  this 
last  year,  it  has  been  demonstrated  that  the  majority  of  the  citizens 
were  opposed  to  the  domination  of  Tammany  Hall;  nevertheless, 
with  only  occasional  and  brief  interruptions,  Tammany  has  held  the 
domination  from  year  to  year  and  from  decade  to  decade.  Sometimes 
its  domination  has  been  put  in  serious  jeopardy.  In  1886  a  powerful 
movement  to  overthrow  it  drove  the  Tammany  wigwam  to  the  desper- 
ate expedient  of  nominating  an  honest  man  (Mr.  Hewitt)  for  Mayor. 
When  a  corrupt  party  nominates  an  honest  man,  it  is  a  sign  of  woe 
indeed.  Everything  portended  a  Waterloo  defeat  for  Tammany,  for 
the  opposition  of  good  citizens  was  solid.  The  only  hope  of  the 
thieves  lay  in  dividing  the  opposition.  Just  then  a  brilliant  and  en- 
thusiastic young  Republican  was  induced — no  doubt  by  the  best  of 
motives— to  put  himself  at  the  head  of  a  ''straight "  Republican  ticket ; 
and  Tammany  was  saved !  The  vote  against  Tammany  was,  in  round 
numbers,  130,000,  to  90,000  m  its  favor.  But  the  patriotic  young  Re- 
publican had  succeeded  in  splitting  the  opposition  vote  nearly  in  the 
middle,  and  Tammany,  condemned  by  a  hostile  majority  of  nearly 
40,000,  held  control  of  the  great  city,  saved,  in  its  hour  of  peril,  by  the 
sagacious  management  of  Mr.  Croker,  aided  by  the  undoubtedly  con- 
scientious partizanship,  I  regret  to  say,  of  Mr.  Theodore  Roosevelt. 

In  1897  came  an  even  more  momentous  crisis,  which  was  to  decide 
the  fate  not  only  of  New  York,  but  of  greater  New  York,  and  not  for 


8       FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY. 

a  year  only,  but  for  four  years.  The  sole  question  before  the  people 
was :  Shall  a  notoriously  corrupt  ring,  managed  by  a  coarse,  odious, 
and  generally  detested  boss,  be  placed  in  almost  absolute  control  of 
the  immense  interests  of  the  great  metropolis?  The  people  declared, 
by  a  majority  of  58,000,  We  will  not  have  this  gang  to  rule  over  us 
Whereupon  the  defeated  party  mounted  gaily  to  the  box,  gripped  the 
reins  and  the  whip,  and  every  brothel  and  gambling  hell  in  the  city 
was  illuminated  in  honor  of  the  triumph  of  the  minority.  The  con- 
scientious politician  who  saved  Tammany  this  time  by  dividing  the 
opposition  in  favor  of  a  straight  Republican  ticket  was  General  Tracy, 
once  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  If  it  had  not  been  Tracy,  it  would  have 
been  some  one  else.  Mr.  Croker  rarely  had  any  difBculty  in  finding  a 
man,  and  a  good  man — no  other  kind  will  answer  the  purpose — to 
render  him  this  indispensable  service.  At  this  election,  there  were  not 
only  two  anti-Tammany  candidates  in  the  field,  but  three,  all  good 
men — excellent  men  ;  the  more  of  them  there  were,  and  the  better  they 
were,  the  more  Tammany  was  pleased.  Intelligent  citizens  were  at  a 
loss  which  of  the  three  to  vote  for,  and  many  saw  no  use  of  voting  at 
all  in  so  hopeless  a  case.  It  was  an  easy  walk-over  for  Tammany. 
Suppose  the  three  opposition  parties  to  be  about  equal  to  each  other, 
and  the  stayers  at  home  who  saw  no  use  in  voting  at  all  to  be  another 
equal  share,  Tammany  had  only  to  cast  one-fifth  of  the  votes  plus  one, 
and  the  remaining  four-fifths  minus  one  were  of  no  avail.  By  virtue 
(if  it  is  proper  to  speak  of  virtue  in  this  connection)  of  a  good  working 
minority,  the  gang  of  thieves  came  legally  and  constitutionally  into 
possession  of  the  city  government  for  the  next  four  years. 

Since  then  we  have  been  witnessing  twice  over  the  agonizing  pe- 
riodical anxiety  of  good  citizens  of  New  York  over  the  always  doubt- 
ful question,  can  we  manage  to  fuse  together  the  various  elements  of 
opposition  to  the  enemies  of  society  ?  On  so  risky  a  question  depends 
the  control,  for  good  or  evil,  of  so  many  millions  of  people,  and  so 
many  thousand  millions  of  property ! 

Now  suppose  the  charter  of  Greater  New  York  had  been  framed 
in  accordance  with  the  old  New  England  principle  of  majority  govern- 
ment, with  this  provision,  that  no  officer  should  be  held  to  be  elected 


FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY.       9 

unless  receiving  a  majority  of  all  votes  cast,  supplemented  by  this 
other  provision  that,  failing  a  majority  for  any  candidate  on  the  first 
ballot,  the  matter  should  go  back  to  the  people  within  eight  days,  to 
choose  between  the  two  highest  candidates;  how  would  these  pro- 
visions operate  ? 

1 .  They  would  begin  operating  long  before  election  day.  Months 
before,  there  would  be  searchings  of  heart  among  all  bosses  of  all 
parties.  The  comfortable  understanding  heretofore  subsisting  be- 
tween the  two  leading  party  leaders,  that  whichexer  way  the  election 
goes,  they  two  are,  between  them,  sure  of  the  spoils,  is  thenceforth 
impossible  ;  the  people  have  a  veto  on  them  both.  The  caucus  would 
still  assemble,  as  it  ought  to;  but  it  would  be  overshadowed  by  the 
chilling  but  salutary  consciousness  that  its  action  was  liable  to  be; re- 
versed at  the  polls  by  the  free  and  unembarrassed  action  of  the  bolter 
and  the  kicker.  It  would  have  to  nominate  in  such  a  way  as  to  pre- 
vent disaffection  and  propitiate  confidence.  An  objectionable  candi- 
date on  any  ticket  might  be  blackballed  by  the  men  of  his  own  party, 
without  thereby  turning  over  the  election  to  the  opposite  party.  A 
corrupt  party  would  not  be  able  to  hold  together  its  own  men. 

2.  As  election  day  approached,  there  would  be  no  distressing 
anxiety  among  good  citizens  as  to  whether  this  man,  or  that,  or  the 
other,  would  be  most  likely  to  unite  all  the  friends  of  good  govern- 
ment. Union  would  be  desirable,  of  course,  but  not  indispensable. 
Any  honest  vote  would  be  effective,  and  no  man  would  have  this  ex- 
cuse for  staying  at  home,  that  there  was  no  use  in  voting.  All  par- 
ties and  factions  and  fads  would  have  a  fair  chance.  Straight  Demo- 
crat or  Reform  Democrat,  Republican  or  Fusionist,  SociaUst  or  Pro- 
hibitionist or  Single-taxer  or  Knight  of  Labor,  or  whatever  else,  would 
have  the  opportunity  to  show  his  strength  and  make  his  moral  demon- 
stration, for  what  it  might  be  worth,  without  being  scared  out  of  his 
liberty  of  suffrage  by  the  party  bugaboo  and  the  cry  that  he  was 
throwing  away  his  vote  and  giving  the  election  to  the  enemy.  If 
among  the  candidates  nominated  under  these  severe  conditions  one 
was  found  who,  by  his  personal  qualities  or  the  strength  of  numbers 
at  his  back,  commanded  a  clear  majority  of  the  voters,  he  would  be 
elected,  and  no  other  man  could  be. 


lo     FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY. 

3.  But  suppose  the  other  case — that  there  is  no  clear  majority,  and 
no  choice ;  what  then  ?  Why  then  there  has  been  held,  under  all  the 
sanctions  that  legislation  can  provide,  free  to  every  voter  without  dis- 
tinction of  party,  a  great  nominating  convention  of  the  whole  people, 
which  has  put  in  nomination  two  candidates  to  be  voted  for  that  day 
week.  There  will  be  a  square  fight.  That  little  game  by  which  a 
knot  of  adroit  intriguers  handling  a  good  working  minority  of  votes, 
has  for  decade  after  decade  held  dominion  over  the  great  metropolis 
in  spite  of  the  demonstrated  will  of  the  people,  the  little  game  of  Tam- 
many, which  is  the  game  of  all  the  little  Tammanies  that  are  to  be 
found  the  country  over,  in  every  town  and  city,  is  blocked  forever. 
The  individual  citizen  is  rehabilitated,  and  the  people  have  come  to 
thejr  rights  again. 

Not  the  least  of  the  public  benefits  to  be  expected  from  the  res- 
toration of  majority  government  is  that  it  would  permit  the  several 
States  to  clear  their  statute  books  of  the  caucus  laws  now  so  generally 
in  use.  Doubtless  under  the  plurality  system  they  are  a  necessary 
evil ;  for  it  is  under  this  system,  and  this  alone,  that  the  power  of  the 
caucus  is  a  public  peril,  to  be  guarded  against  by  drastic  methods ; 
and  these  are  certainly  drastic  enough.  Instead  of  abating  the  power 
of  the  party  machine,  they  aggravate  it  to  the  danger  point,  enabling 
it  to  intrench  itself  in  the  statute-book ;  giving  it  recognition  before 
the  law  with  no  corresponding  responsibility  to  the  law ;  seeming  to 
give  the  citizens,  so  far  as  they  are  obedient  partizans,  power  over  the 
machine,  but  really  confirming  the  machine  in  its  power  over  the 
citizens ;  completing  the  practical  disfranchisement  of  the  non-parti- 
zan  citizen.  Doubtless  these  laws  bring  some  relief  from  the  impu- 
dent frauds  that  have  been  common  in  the  nomination  business. 
But  the  good  they  may  do  is  more  than  offset  by  the  adopting  of 
party  organization  as  part  of  the  fixed,  legal  machinery  of  go\  ern- 
ment.  Perhaps  no  constitutional  amendment  that  has  ever  been 
adopted  is  of  graver  consequence  than  this  device  of  gearing  the 
party  machine  into  the  mechanism  of  the  State.  It  is  a  thing  to 
beware  of. 

I  am  fully  prepared  to  show  that  the  dynasty  of  Piatt  in  the  State 


FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY,     ii 

of  New  York,  of  Quay  in  Pennsylvania,  and  of  the  den  of  thieves  in 
Philadelphia  are  consequences  of  the  same  system.  But  time  fails 
and  I  must  content  myself  with  this  one  instance  of  the  Tammany 
despotism,  as  showing  to  what  abuse  a  free  people  is  liable,  without 
the  safeguard  of  the  New  England  principle  of  Majority  Government. 

How  came  this  political  principle  to  be  adopted  in  all  the  New 
England  colonies  but  one,  when  there  was  no  precedent  for  it  in  Old 
England,  nor,  so  far  as  I  know,  anywhere  else  in  history  ?  It  is  an 
interestmg  question  on  which  much  might  be  said,  if  there  were  time. 
But  however  it  originated,  here  it  was,  and  here  it  stayed  till  within 
the  memory  of  some  of  us  now  living.  And  what  it  did  to  save  the 
cause  of  freedom  and  human  rights  in  New  England  and  in  America, 
and  what  it  may  yet  do,  if  it  cari  be  got  back  into  the  place  which  it 
ought  never  to  have  lost,  to  save  all  the  States  from  the  shame  into 
which  Pennsylvania  and  New  York  have  fallen,  are  subjects  worth 
your  pondering.  Let  me  tell  the  story  from  the  Massachusetts  point 
of  view. 

The  importance  of  majority  election  did  not  show  at  first.  When 
there  are  no  parties  and  only  one  ticket,  one  mode  of  election  is  as 
good  as  another.  When  there  are  two  parties  and  no  scattering  vote, 
a  plurality  and  a  majority  are  the  same  thing.  But  let  the  time  come 
when  grave  questions  set  honest  and  earnest  men  a-thinking,  and 
votes  begin  to  scatter,  it  becomes  a  serious  question  whether  scatter- 
ing votes  are  to  be  reckoned  as  of  any  account,  or  not. 

Well,  that  time  did  come.  Whig  leaders  and  Democratic  leaders, 
bidding  against  each  other,  committed  their  parties  to  the  compro- 
mise of  principles  of  right  and  justice,  in  favor  of  great  national  par- 
tizan  interests.  Then  it  began  to  appear  whether  a  scattering  vote 
was  worth  anything.  Presently,  in  the  election  returns,  alongside  of 
the  Whig  column  and  the  Democratic  column,  each  with  its  thousands 
of  votes,  appeared  a  little  trickling  rill  of  a  third  column — "scatter- 
ing" ten,  or  a  dozen,  or  a  score.  And  the  party  leaders  were  pleas- 
antly amused,  and  said:  "O,  you  had  better  give  it  up;  you  are 
only  wasting  your  vote ;  you  never  can  get  your  man  in ;  you  will 
have  to  choose  between  the  two  leading  candidates."     And  birds  of 


12     FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY. 

ill  omen,  perched  along  the  ridge-pole  of  the  Liberator  office,  sat  sim- 
ply croaking  in  a  dismal  row,  "  It  is  of  no  use ;  better  let  politics 
alone  and  come  and  croak  with  us  up  here."  But  that  was  before  the 
scattering  vote  had  been  disfranchised  in  Massachusetts ;  and  the  an- 
swer was  made — it  could  not  be  made  to-day — "  Perhaps  we  cannot 
get  our  man  in  ;  we  can  keep  both  your  men  out."  And  they  did  it. 
One  congressional  election  after  another  was  hung  up  with  "no 
choice,"  (it  is  said  that  in  one  district  there  were  no  less  than  forty  in- 
effectual ballotings)  until  it  was  forced  in  upon  the  minds  of  the  poli- 
ticians that  these  obstinate  and  impracticable  people  must  be  reck- 
oned with.  So  it  came  to  pass  that,  by  the  power  of  the  scattering 
vote,  the  free  citizens  of  Massachusetts,  in  spite  of  Whig,  in  spite  of 
Democrat,  and  in  spite  of  the  venomous  Httle  gang  of  Garrison 
anarchists,  were  able  to  send  to  the  Senate  Charles  Sumner  and 
Henry  Wilson,  and  to  place  in  the  House  of  Representatives  New 
England  incarnate  in  the  person  of  Eli  Thayer,  the  man  who  abolished 
slavery. 

How  came  this  priceless  muniment  of  popular  liberty  to  be  lost  ? 
The  story  is  worth  telling. 

The  latest  of  those  constitutional  conventions  which  make  so 
noble  a  feature  of  Massachusetts  history  was  held  at  a  time  (i  854) 
when  the  growth  of  a  third  party  caused  the  inconveniences  incidental 
to  majority  election  to  be  keenly  felt  by  the  two  parties  which  had  so 
long  divided  between  them  the  supremacy  of  the  State.  It  was  natu- 
ral enough  that  some  should  be  eager  to  cut  off  the  inconveniences  at 
a  stroke  by  disfranchising  the  scattering  vote— counting  it,  to  be  sure, 
and  reporting  it,  but  treating  it  otherwise  as  of  no  practical  impor- 
tance. It  was  demanded  that  Massachusetts  should  abandon  the 
most  honorable  and  distinguishing  feature  of  her  immemorial  polity, 
and  adopt  the  principle  of  plurality  election,  and  let  minorities  govern. 
The  question  was  freely  debated  in  as  able  a  political  assembly  as 
ever  sat ;  and  great  as  were  the  temptations,  the  demand  was  resisted 
and  refused.  Even  case-hardened  politicians,  like  the  two  Benjamins, 
Hallett  of  Boston  and  Butler  of  Lowell,  rose,  for  the  moment,  to  the 
dignity  of  a  statesmanship  wortny  of  the  august  body  of  which  they 


FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY.     13 

were  members,  and  declared  that,  speaking  as  politicians,  they  would 
welcome  the  change  ;  speaking  as  citizens,  they  must  reject  it.  In  the 
spirit  of  that  unknown  Roman  who  planted  a  rose  on  the  grave  of 
Nero,  I  tender  this  humble  tribute  to  the  memory  of  Ben  Butler. 

How  it  happened  that  in  that  noble  body  no  one  had  the  gump- 
tion to  propose  retaining  the  vital  principle  of  majority  election,  while 
clearing  it  of  the  liability  to  prolonged  deadlocks,  I  do  not  know.  But 
so  it  was.  The  great  convention  held  firmly  to  the  principle  of 
majority  government  as  a  safeguard  against  party  tyranny  too  pre- 
cious to  be  lost.  But  the  needed  limitations  were  not  provided.  Elec- 
tion contests  were  tediously  protracted,  till  at  last  the  people  lost 
patience  and  burned  the  barn  to  get  rid  of  the  rats.  What  the  great 
convention  had  held  fast  as  an  invaluable  muniment  of  freedom,  some 
later  legislature  by  a  snap  vote  tossed  into  the  scrap  heap.  It  was  a 
revolution. 

The  story  in  Connecticut  has  been  different.  Here  the  alternative 
to  a  majority  election  of  State  officers  has  been  to  turn  the  choice 
over  to  a  rotten-borough  legislature,  that  could  be  relied  on  to  defeat 
the  popular  will  more  effectually  than  even  the  plurality  system 
could  do  it.  If  no  other  course  had  been  open,  the  lapse  into  plurality 
election  and  minority  government  would  have  been  justified. 

The  hour  is  approaching  when  this  elect  people,  whose  are  the 
fathers,  and  whose  boast  it  is  that  they  never  were  in  bondage  to  any 
man,  will  awake  to  the  consciousness  that  they  have  ceased  to  be 
governed  by  the  free  majority  of  their  own  votes,  and  have  come  to  be 
dominated,  not  even  by  a  party,  but  by  the  faction  of  a  party,  by  the 
ring  of  a  faction,  and  by  the  boss  of  a  ring.  What  separates  you 
from  the  boss  tyranny  that  prevails  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania, 
is  only  the  possible  interval  of  a  very  few  years.  The  very  expedients 
used  for  warding  off  this  result  are  bringing  it  nearer.  Your  laws  for 
the  recognition,  sanction  and  regulation  of  the  primary  meeting  give  a 
firmer  grip  to  the  professional  politician,  and  give  the  individual  citi- 
zen to  understand  that  he  may  have  an  effective  voice  in  the  affairs 
of  the  State  only  on  condition  of  being  broken  to  the  harness  and 
wearing  the  collar  of  some  organized  party. 


14     FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY. 

The  way  out  of  these  difficulties,  present  and  prospective,  is  to 
back  out,  the  way  you  came  in.  Returning  to  the  original  principles  of 
the  Commonwealth,  we  do  not  indeed  get  rid  of  parties  and  caucuses; 
we  do  not  want  to.  We  get  rid  only  of  the  arrogant  and  insolent  su- 
premacy of  them.  Thenceforth  they  would  understand  their  respon- 
sibility to  the  people — not  only  to  the  party,  but  to  the  kicker,  the 
bolter  and  the  mugwump,  whom  their  souls  abhor,  but  whom  then  it 
would  be  no  longer  safe  to  treat  as  a  negligible  quantity.  At  the  polls 
the  citizen  would  no  longer  be  shut  up  to  the  wretched  alternative, 
either  to  make  choice  between  two  evils,  or  to  fire  a  blank  cartridge 
into  the  air.  He  would  be  free  to  defeat  the  candidate,  without  help- 
ing elect  the  other  candidate.  The  disciplined  legions  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Republicans  could  no  longer  be  marched  to  the  ballot-box 
in  solid  column  to  vote  the  machine  ticket,  after  they  found  that  they 
could  defeat  the  ticket  without  turning  the  State  over  to  the  Democrats. 
Citizens  of  New  York,  whose  one  desire  is  so  to  vote  as  to  rout  the 
den  of  thieves  that  has  ruled  and  plundered  them  these  fifty  years, 
would  no  longer  be  subject  to  distraction  by  the  rival  clamors  of  two 
or  three  opposition  parties,  each  shouting  that  votes  would  be  simply 
wasted  that  were  cast  for  the  other  candidate.  Given  the  majority 
principle  and  ring  rule  in  New  York  is  dead  beyond  resurrection. 
Without  it,  a  ring  despotism  is  impending  for  Boston  and  Worcester, 
for  Hartford  and  New  Haven. 

I  had  hoped  to  speak  fully  of  two  other  of  our  Lost  Legacies, 
illustrating  the  political  wisdom  of  our  fathers,  and  the  unwisdom  of 
some  of  their  successors.     Let  me  at  least  mention  them. 

in.  That  noble  law  reform  in  which  originated  the  admirable  old 
License  Laws  of  the  New  England  colonies  and  States.  It  took  the 
immemorial  English  abuse  of  granting  money-making  monopolies  to 
court  favorites,  and  transfigured  it  into  a  wise  and  salutary  system  of 
License  Legislation  for  controlling,  in  the  interest  of  the  public  safety, 
certain  necessary  but  dangerous  sorts  of  business.  It  was  due  to  this 
reform  that  these  colonies,  and  then  these  States,  had,  for  so  many 
generations,  down  to  the  time  when  the  temperance  men  and  the  temper- 
ance women  began  monkeying  with  the  statutes,  that  License  Law 


FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY.     15 

controlling  the  sale  of  intoxicating  liquors,  under  which  no  liquor- 
saloon  or  bar-room  or  tippling-house  could  legally  exist  within  the 
Commonwealth — the  best  prohibitory  law  that  has  yet  been  devised. 
Through  the  more  or  less  unconscious  co-operation  of  the  temperance 
reformers  with  the  liquor-selling  interest,  we  have  lost,  not  only  the 
law,  but  the  very  idea  of  sound  license  legislation.  It  has  suited  the 
policy  of  the  so-called  prohibitionists,  to  represent  that  license  legis- 
lation is  simply  an  expedient  by  which  the  Commonwealth  seeks  to 
collect  blood-money  by  compounding  with  a  business  essentially  crim- 
inal ;  and  that  the  business  of  a  licensing  board  is  to  sell  permits  for 
doing  mischief  to  cash  customers  over  the  counter ;'  and  this  defini- 
tion, that  suited  the  prohibitionist,  equally  suited  the  basest  elements 
in  the  liquor-selling  interest.  So  through  the  mutual  helpfulness  of 
these  two  antagonistic  parties  the  historic  conception  of  sound  license 
legislation  has  been  lost  out  of  the  popular  mind,  and  the  ideal  of  the 
fathers  has  been  miserably  perverted  and  corrupted.  With  the  con- 
nivance of  zealous  reformers  the  license  laws  have  been  made  low  and 
lax;  and  to  the  delight  of  the  liquor-dealers  the  alternative  prohibi- 
tion has  been  made  rigorous  and  annoying,  and  the  result  is  what  we 
see  it  to  be  to-day.  The  right  use  of  license  laws  is  indicated  on  one 
of  the  earliest  pages  of  Winthrop's  Journal ;  the  working  of  it  is  illus- 
trated in  a  striking  passage  in  the  Travels  of  President  Dwight,  a  hun- 
dred years  ago,  contrasting  the  orderly  New  England  tavern,  con- 
trolled by  the  salutary  license  law  of  that  time,  with  the  debased  and 
demoralizing  character  of  the  taverns  across  the  New  York  line, 
where  our  modern  corrupt  idea  of  license  as  a  measure  "for  revenue 
only"  was  already  in  vogue.  It  was  one  of  the  foremost  students  of 
New  England  history,  and  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  earliest  and  life- 
long champions  of  the  Temperance  Reformation,  who,  at  the  end  of 
sixty  years  of  public  service,  declared  that,  after  witnessing  the  many 
experiments  in  temperance  legislation  from  1825  onward,  he  was  satis- 
fied that  the  best  of  all  laws  governing  that  subject  was  a  good  license 
law. 

IV.     Finally  the  most  precious  of  our  lost  legacies  from    the 
Fathers  is  the  ideal  of  citizenship  as  a  solemn  trust  conferred  by  the 


i6     FOUR  LOST  LEGACIES  OF  THE  EARLY  N.  E.  CIVIL  POLITY. 

State  upon  worthily  qualified  persons,  to  be  executed  under  oath,  with 
sole  reference  to  "the  public  weal,  without  respect  of  persons  or  favor 
of  any  man."  The  admission  to  the  franchise,  in  the  old  time,  was 
like  the  investiture  of  a  monarch;  and  the  Freeman's  Oath,  "by  the 
great  and  dreadful  name  of  the  ever-living  God  "  consecrating  the 
freeman  to  his  high  function,  was  like  the  coronation  oath  of  a  king. 
The  notion  that  to  have  a  share  in  the  responsibility  of  government  is 
a  universal  and  inalienable  right  of  humanity,  a  harpagma  for  every 
one  to  snatch  at  for  his  own  behoof,  had  no  place  in  the  New  Eng- 
land polity.  That  high  privilege,  that  solemn  duty,  was  to  be  con- 
ferred on  those  who  would  use  it  worthily,  and  on  no  others.  Doubt- 
less through  the  successive  generations  there  has  been  many  a  lapse 
from  the  realization  of  this  ideal.  But  it  has  been  reserved  to  our  own 
time  to  witness  the  open  abandonment  and  repudiation  of  it.  We 
owe  the  debasement  of  the  moral  standard  of  pubUc  life  in  part,  per- 
haps we  ought  to  say  in  large  part,  to  that  woman  suffrage  movement 
which  gave  such  lavish  promises  of  the  angelic  purification  of  politics. 
Its  major  premise  was  that  everybody  had  a  natural  right  to  vote;  and 
its  argument  was  that  if  this  right  should  be  conceded  to  women,  they 
would  use  it  to  promote  their  own  interests  as  a  class.  It  was  exactly 
in  the  line  of  this  reasoning,  when  the  nation,  in  a  disastrous  hour, 
conferred  the  suffrage  at  a  single  stroke,  on  many  myriads  of  persons 
notoriously  incapable  of  using  it  aright,  and  did  this  with  the  openly 
avowed  purpose  that  they  should  use  it,  not  "for  the  pubUc  weal," 
but  as  a  defensive  weapon,  and  for  the  advancement  of  their  race 
interests;  whereupon  they  were  not  slow  to  better  the  instruction. 
From  this  point  it  is  not  so  very  long  a  descent,  by  natural  gravitation, 
to  that  lower  deep  of  the  Delaware  idea — an  idea  which  is  alleged  to 
be  not  a  total  stranger  in  more  northern  latitudes — the  idea  that  a 
freeman's  right  of  suffrage  is  a  snug  piece  of  personal  property,  hav- 
ing an  appreciable  market  value  in  cash,  that  is  to  be  disposed  of  to 
the  highest  bidder.  Is  this,  or  is  it  not,  the  level  to  which  our  politi- 
cal life  is  settling  down  ?    The  question  is  worth  our  pondering. 


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